Posts Tagged ‘coalition’

…the party line from both SFGov and the SF “Vision Zero Coalition*” is that there’s a chance of eliminating all transportation deaths in San Francisco starting from 2024 and then continuing in perpetuity.

The arrangement looks something like this:

The way to prevent transportation deaths is to get inside the heads of people to find out what went wrong. The Vision Zero Coalition calls that kind of approach “victim-blaming” and then focuses on traffic bulbs and tree-filled medians.

“The Police Department found that in the 17 pedestrian deaths, drivers were responsible for eight and pedestrians were responsible for nine. Bicyclists were responsible in all three instances when they died.”

One area where SFGov could apply an NTSB-style safety culture approach would be with MUNI operators in particular and SFGov employees in general. But there’s no chance of that happening, I don’t think. So SFGov isn’t serious. SFGov likes to host photo ops, but SFGov isn’t serious.

1. Hey, SF County has a “powerful bicycle lobby” as well – so let’s take a look, paragraph by paragraph. I should say though, that if I were running things bike-wise in Marin, I prolly wouldn’t listen to Dick Spotswood at all.

2. I’ll bet you the Marin County real estate industry, for instance, has lobbyists more effective than the Marin County Bicycle Coalition’s, to keep things in perspective.

3. So DS is promoting a “silent majority” argument against a minority of a minority? OK fine, but it sounds like he’s mad at just a small number of bikers. And what’s this – “self-righteous on-the-road arrogance?” We have a bit of that on our side of The Bridge also.

4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Well, I didn’t know all that stuff. San Francisco County Supervisors don’t really have to worry about people coming after them for excessive bike advocacy, so this makes Marin seem a lot different than SF. I’ll tell you, riding through a smelly old train tunnel sounds like something worth trying, once or twice anyway. (I could go either way on whether opening these tunnels makes sense, cost benefit-wise – I don’t know much about them.)

9, 10. Charging people for walking or riding across the GGB is a real non-starter, like something that’s never going to happen ever again. (Actually, I wouldn’t mind if the state of CA rolled governance of the GGB into the BATA and then cast Golden Gate Transit out, leaving Marin County to pay for Marin County’s transit system. JMO.)

11. “Biker-anarchist Critical Mass” isn’t all that much these days and it doesn’t operate “most Fridays,” just some Fridays, just once a month, actually.

13. What’s this, the Marin bike movement was “hijacked by big-time developers and their regional alphabet agencies’ allies.” Wow, yes, the same thing happened in SF over the past quarter-century – this is the era of the “urbanst,” indeed.

14. We have a similar dynamic in SF, but it’d be hard to imagine bike advocacy ever being a “ballot box negative” down here.

15. Oh, at long last, the TO BE SURE graf! Finally, all the way at the bottom. Hurrah!

16, 17. Oh, and now come the bromides for the bike movement of Marin. IDK, if I had a lot of time and not much money, I’d get my buds to pack into political meetings as well.

All right, that’s it.

(Oh, I’ll add that the membership at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition appears to have dropped something close to 20% from the high of a few years back. The SFBC has been captured by SFGov, so these days it pays more heed to whichever Mayor is in currently in office than its remaining membership. JMO.)

Here’s the latest effort from CW Nevius, who’s taking a break from being spokesman for San Francisco’s right-side-of-the-aisle political faction to go on a “bit of a rant” against local pedestrians. But what’s up with this?

“Even when they are in the right, I worry about them. When the traffic light countdown gets to five or six, they step confidently into the crosswalk — which is their right…”

Don’t you have an editor, Nevius? Oh, that’s right, you’re too old and experienced to have an editor, and plus, editors cost money, that’s right.

But don’t you have a fact checker, Nevius? Oh, that’s right, you’re too old and experienced to have a fact checker, and plus, fact checkers cost money, that’s right.

But don’t you have a photographer, Nevius? Oh, that’s right, photographers cost money. So all your observations, we’ll just have to take your word about them. OK fine. BTW, [sarcasmmode ON] nice stock photo you’ve got there, Neve. “Cause a stock photo taken in the People’s Republic of China, you know, from more than a thousand li away, well, that really illustrates how “militant” and “freaking nuts” San Francisco peds are, huh? [sarcasmmode OFF]

And oh, BTW Neve, the peds of SF aren’t militant, not at all. Try to find a different word for what you mean.

Of course you’re new in town, I get that. Sure, welcome to San Francisco, Neve.

But you’re doing a half-assed job doing your half-time gig.

You need to try harder.

*”Walk, Wait, or Don t Walk

21456. Whenever a pedestrian control signal showing the words “WALK” or “WAIT” or “DON’T WALK” or other approved symbol is in place, the signal shall indicate as follows:

(a) “WALK” or approved “Walking Person” symbol. A pedestrian facing the signal may proceed across the roadway in the direction of the signal, but shall yield the right-of-way to vehicles lawfully within the intersection at the time that signal is first shown.

(b) Flashing or steady “DON’T WALK” or “WAIT” or approved “Upraised Hand” symbol. No pedestrian shall start to cross the roadway in the direction of the signal, but any pedestrian who has partially completed crossing shall proceed to a sidewalk or safety zone or otherwise leave the roadway while the “WAIT” or “DON’T WALK” or approved “Upraised Hand” symbol is showing.

1. YOU NEED TO BE IN THE CROSSWALK WHEN YOU GET HIT. This one’s pretty basic. And actually, it’s pretty flexible IRL. So let’s say you’re over the line a bit, your foot was 18 inches away from the white paint, well that could be OK. This rule becomes important if you’re halfway between blocks and you start jaywalking – a top cause of death of peds in SF. There’ve been many cases of this on the streets of San Francisco lately, like Hayes, Lombard, Masonic, Market, I could go on and on.

2. YOU CAN’T START TOO EARLY. This is called jumping the light. So of course, you’ve got to wait for the green light (or green WALK signal), you already know that. BUT THAT”S NOT ALL. You’ve also got to wait for traffic legally in the intersection to clear the intersection. So, GREEN DOES NOT MEAN “GO.” Green means you need to look for traffic clearing the intersection. And if that traffic isn’t over the speed limit and if that traffic entered the intersection on a yellow (which is totally OK under CA law, generally) and you step off and get hit, then, surprise, you’re the one at fault. So yes, you were in the crosswalk, but the collision is your fault, sorry.

3. YOU CAN’T START TOO LATE. This means that DON’T WALK means don’t walk. Now, in many places about town, you don’t have a ped-only signal telling you what to do. So, you’re allowed to start crossing on a green all the way until a yellow light appears. Effectively, the yellow light is your DON’T WALK signal. Of course this means that you might still be in the crosswalk when the light turns green for cross traffic. But now the law is in your favor, ped. The law says that cross traffic needs to wait for you to clear the intersection.

4. YOU CAN’T GO TOO SLOW. This one’s easy – it means you’re not supposed to stop during your trip across the street as best I can figure. (Leaving aside the law, there are standards for how long peds should have to cross an intersection, but they get thrown out the window when SF deals with 100-foot-plus wide monsters like horrible, horrible Octavia Boulevard, oh well.)

5. YOU CAN’T GO TOO FAST. Ooh, joggers. Your California Vehicle Code was written without concern for joggers, pretty much. So if you’re sprinting into an intersection and get hit by a MUNI, look for the SFPD to put the blame on you, yes, even though you were in the crosswalk.

Click to expand

So that’s reality.

But if you’d prefer a distorted, rose-colored view of reality, feel free to surf on over StreetsBlog SF (Straight Outta Park Slope!), or the SFBC (declining membership these days, despite being sponsored by SFGov SFMTA MUNI DPT) or Walk SF (sponsored by let’s-build-high-near-the-Waterfront real estate interests).

Of course he owes his narrow election victory to a man named Coates. So if Coates wants something done up here in San Francisco* but it doesn’t increase our commonweal, well, that’s what we’d call a conflict of interest (or everyday politics, take your pick.) Anyway, as District 2 Supervisor, he’s well north of his scionic predecessors, but he’ll be sure to tow the party line (the right of the aisle party line) whether it makes sense or not.

“Supervisor Farrell is also looking for ways to pitch it beyond aesthetics.”

Oh really! There just might be something more important out in the world than the aesthetic imperatives of a handful of Russian Hill millionaires who want to give the 415 a makeover and who want to tax every San Francisco renter $50 a year for the “benefit?”

So I suppose we’ll soon hear about the important safety benefits of doing whatever it is these aestheticians can dream up?

Hoo boy.

But IRL, Wires are Life. Wires connect people and move people cheaply and safely. Wires are beautiful, man.

1. Can somebody tell me when our San Francisco Bicycle Coalition became a quasi-official government organization, and then later on also tell me when it becomes a full-fledged subsidiary of the SFMTA? I ask that because the SFBC gets a lot of funding from SFGov. (That’s why the SFBC stopped promoting Critical Mass – because its government paymasters kept bugging them about it.) And the SFBC got included in that whole corrupt lets-let-Twitter-not-pay-taxes deal? Yep. And yet, the SFBC is allowed to freely endorse candidates for Mayor, and I’ll tell you, not necessarily the candidates that SFBC membership votes for, no no, but for the candidates that the officers of the SFBC think will win, like Appointed Mayor Ed Lee, for example. Mmmm…

2. Uh, the SFBC is still promoting the whole PEDESTRIANS ALWAYS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY trope? Yep. Even though that’s wrong. Dead wrong. Morally and legally. Here’s why. So, shouldn’t you have checked with a lawyer first, SFBC, you know, before you start spouting off about “BIKELAW”? (Oh, you did? Who’s that? Who’s that jackass?)

3. And, your attempts at moral suasion in this post-Chris Bucchere era have failed, SFBC. I say that because people be still being running red lights on Market Street, particularly the ones that are for ped crosswalks only, like betwixt 8th & 7th, and 7th & 6th, and 6th & 5th and so on. Your campaign has had no effect, FYI. I’ll show you right now. Everybody in this peloton has just run the red light (actually two red lights, sort of) on Market inbound betwixt 6th and 5th streets. Each and every one:

Now I’ll ask, is this kind of thing “biking politely?” (I already know the answers to my other questions, but I don’t know the answer to this one. I don’t know what the SFMTAMUNIDPTSFBC means when it talks about ‘biking polite.”) Oh, and BTW, 20 seconds after this shot was taken, you were rewarding these cyclists with candy bars on the other side of 5th, just saying.

Oh, here we go, here’s how the SFBC, a quasi-government organization, spends your tax dollars, on campaigns like this:

Now I’ll tell you, I didn’t stop to get a chocolate bar, but if I had I would have been able to win a Major Prize. Apparently, each bar had a code on it, kind of like a Willie Wonka movie.

“We know that the majority of people biking in San Francisco are biking politely, and giving pedestrians the right of way. So we at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition wanted to say thank you! Thank you for following the law, being a great bicycle aombassador and leading the way in safe, civil streets.

Stopping behind the crosswalk and giving pedestrians the right of way keeps people who are on foot safe and goes a long way to making our streets safer and more comfortable for everyone.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will be giving out delicious treats for those we catch biking polite. If you “got caught” by us, enter your information and ticket number below and you’ll be entered for a chance to win a great getaway at the Bear Valley Inn. Thanks to Alter Eco for donating the delicious chocolate rewards!

I haven’t heard word one about the long-promised lawsuit what was going to overturn SFGov and re-install the old tenant as the operator.

“The civil lawsuit begins March 2012 and will expose the truth about all the many laws that Rec & Park broke in order to bring in an out-of-state chain, with no boating experience to take over this historic boating recreation site.”

And oh, the lawsuit against the City from the old tenant should have some activity soon, maybe something is scheduled for Superior Court in March 2012.

And the latest from the absurdly-named Save Stow Lake Coalition has to do with paint with lead in it, which, Gentle Reader, I’m sitting two yards from right now. And, this is true for you too, G.R. You know, ’cause paint with some amount of lead in it is everywhere. Simply everywhere. (If it turns out that this coalition is some long-running anti-NIMBY performance art project, I won’t be surprised…)

“The Recreation and Park Department and Ortega Family Enterprises are hosting a community meeting to discuss the upcoming renovations of the Stow Lake Boathouse. The work will include creating an indoor seating area so that the building is open to the public for the first time, adding an accessible bathroom, upgrading the building systems as well as upgrading the general condition of the building.

And, I can find the Official Twitter for Stow Lake Boathouse LLC, right here.

But, to review, I can’t find any evidence of this meeting online.

Oh hey, look, it’s Ortega Family Enterprises’ Armand Ortega hisself, at the last big Boathouse meeting (the last one that I know of, anyway) at the Hall of Flowers.**

Click to expand

Oh well.

*Uh, Ortega Family Enterprises has “boating experience” now, doesn’t it? You might want to change that. And do you want the City and County poking about buildings in your real estate empire looking for paint with lead in it? I’d bet they’d find some. Oh no! And shrillness-wise, you’re giving us a 9. How about giving us a 3 instead? All right, take two, roll film, action.

**Yes, that’s the actual color of the interior of the Hall of Flowers. I call it indescribable green.